


(Un)Familiar

by AnonymousPuzzler



Category: Layton Brothers: Mystery Room
Genre: (it weren’t healthy y’all), (like not metaphorical a literal heart condition), Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Mention of past Alfendi/Hilda, Post-Game, Rating is primarily for swearing, heart issues, other than that it’s pretty chill, spoilers for the whole game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPuzzler/pseuds/AnonymousPuzzler
Summary: Everything is different, but Alfendi will be damned if he takes the changes lying down.





	(Un)Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> Layton Brothers Mystery Room is an underappreciated gem and I will, in fact, die on this hill
> 
> Big thanks to my buddy Jamie (@plebeiantologist on tumblr, @jaypg9 on twitter) for, one, letting me drag him into Puzzle Game Hell all those years ago, and two, for pulling me back in for a new and fascinating engagement in Mystery Room Content. This one’s for you, my dude.
> 
> Anyway thank you and please enjoy this Content

He wakes up alone. 

...well, not _alone,_ per se. Not alone, because his head is never empty these days, but Fendi is quieter than he’s ever experienced, hidden away in some dark corner of his mind so he scarcely knows he’s there. It’s the closest he’s been to well and truly _himself_  in a number of years.

Distantly, a part of him knows this isn’t a good thing, isn’t something worth celebrating. Fendi has only retreated to quietly nurse his metaphorical wounds from the reopened — and now, finally, truly closed — Forbodium case. His silence is little more than the same trauma Al felt years ago, when he half-woke aching in a hospital bed and realized his body, his mind, was no longer his own.

Fendi’s deference is not a victory. But years in the dark have made Al selfish and greedy, and so, almost without thinking, he responds as if it was.

He swings long legs off the side of the bed and glares down at himself — rumpled sweater and half-unbuttoned jeans; Fendi hadn’t even had the decency to _undress_  before falling asleep last night. He furiously removes the offensive garments and shoves them, along with every other scrap of clothing Fendi’s left strewn across the room, into the very bottom of his hamper. A luxuriant shower follows; brisk, cold water, proper bodywash, _conditioner,_ a straight-razor shave. He considers, momentarily, lopping off Fendi’s god-forsaken rattail, but… regrettably, he has grown attached to the long hair, so he settles instead for cleaning up the split ends and properly styling it.

Next, breakfast. He clears the fridge of old takeaway containers with a manic glee, slamming them into the bin. There’s little in the way of fresh ingredients, but at the very least there’s a carton of eggs and some prepackaged sausage, so he sets to work on those to start. He’ll run to the shops later, he decides, pick up enough ingredients for a proper dinner.

...actually, he thinks, eating his modest but finely-seasoned handiwork, that’s a fabulous idea. When’s the last time he went for a _run?_  (A very, very long time ago, he concludes, based on the damnable takeaway-gut Fendi’s started to develop.) He can set out after breakfast, jog his old route and end at the grocers’ in time to pick out the best cuts of meat. It’s the kind of day he’s longed for with his entire being ever since Forbodium.

It takes him a bit to find his old runners — Fendi’s put them, along with the rest of his shoe rack, in the very back of the hall closet, hidden in a dark corner. He retrieves the whole thing and returns it to its proper place just by the front door, then full-force chucks Fendi’s god-awful Converse into the closet for good measure. The hair, he can tolerate, but so long as Fendi’s going to grant him control, he refuses to wear those foolish things ever again. 

The brisk morning air is comforting when he steps out, like encountering an old friend. In his prior life, the life when he was Alfendi Layton, singular, this was his everyday. A morning jog before heading to the precinct, a satisfactory day at work, a homemade dinner followed by a drink and a smoke. (God, he misses smoking.)

 _We can’t do that anymore,_ Fendi pipes up, abruptly, giving him a start. The day is young, though, so there’s no one to look at him with alarm when he jumps and glares at nothing. 

 _Can’t do what? Smoke?_  He scoffs back. _No, I suppose we can’t, given you tossed out everything I had at the flat._

 _The running,_  Fendi clarifies. _The smoking too, I suppose. Any of it._

He considers a moment — was this really so important that Fendi had to emerge from his self-imposed exile? ...but he’s longed for this for too long, and he’s already taken the day between his teeth like a bulldog into rawhide, so he responds with a venomous _fuck you_  and starts jogging anyway. 

He falls back into the routine easily, feet against pavement, following his old route without even thinking about it. They could have been doing this for years, had Fendi not been so lazy and selfish. They could have kept up the jogging, kept in shape, not been paradoxically lanky and fat and altogether useless as he is now. But he’ll work up to it, he decides with vigor, increasing his speed and pace incrementally. He’ll start back up, work off the gut, cook for himself, and before anyone knows it he’ll be able to chase down crooks with the best of them again—

His heart stutters, his breath chokes in his throat, and on instinct he screeches to a frantic halt.

 _That’s why we can’t do this anymore,_  Fendi pipes up again, matter-of-fact. Al balks, grabbing at his chest, feeling the heavy, unsteady thrum of his heart against shallow ribs.

 _You’re fucking with me again,_  he spits back. He knows this feeling, has experienced a subtler version just about every time Fendi drags himself back into control. _Stop it. **Stop**  it. This body is **mine**. You can’t fuck with it just because you don’t want to run._

 _I’m not doing anything,_  Fendi retorts. _This is what you do. This is what you **always**  do. You get overly excited and our heart can’t—_

 ** _Shut up,_**  he snaps, and then he starts off running again.

(This wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for him. It _wouldn’t._ If it wasn’t for his takeaway and agoraphobia and the gut and him stealing away his body and pounding on his heart to do it, to drag him back into the dark metaphorical backseat of his mind—) 

There’s a skipped heartbeat so painful that he feels it all the way up to the top of his skull. His feet tangle up in his shock, sending him spilling heavily to the sidewalk, palms scraped up and breath thoroughly knocked out of him. It _stays_  knocked out of him, though, breath coming shallowly, and he can feel the aching, stuttering pound of his heart, the iron-sharp taste of blood in the back of his throat— 

_**Stop doing this to me.** _

_I’m not,_  Fendi snaps back, and the panic in his tone is finally enough to convince him he’s being truthful.

He hears, distant and vague, someone running up to him and shouting just as his chest constricts, the world going fuzzy and dark.

  

~

  

Flora and Katrielle are both in the ER when he wakes up, which is how he _knows_  he’s fucked. Kat is always sticking her nose into his business, but Flora is neck-deep in thesis work, so she minds her own unless something’s well and truly wrong.

Which, of course, means something is well and truly wrong.

“What on earth were you _thinking?!”_  She chides the second they’ve gotten through the garden-variety _are you okay_  and _we were so worried_. He can’t help but grimace at her raised voice — Kat’s his annoying baby sister, so he can easily brush off similar criticisms from her, but upsetting _Flora_  is rightly considered an unforgivable sin among the Layton family.

“Really, you would think he’d remember having a bloody _heart condition_ ,” Kat agrees with a huff, comfortingly patting Flora’s shoulder before turning her glare back on Al. “Particularly given you were exonerated for the case you _received_ that condition in not _days_ ago. _Really,_ Al.”

“So _what?!”_  He snaps back, because being angry is easier than trying to come to terms with the truth of the affair. “I’m just supposed to sit back and let my body _rot?!”_  

“I’d certainly prefer that to finding you dead of cardiac arrest halfway through a jog!!” Flora retorts, and he flinches back, chastened. Kat grabs both her shoulders now, hugging her tight, until Flora’s breathing levels and the creases leave her face. “Alfendi, I know how badly you want things to go back to normal, but they _can’t._  You’re not the same person anymore. You’re just going to have to accept that. Okay?”

He can’t meet her gaze. He stares down at his lap, instead, at his hands with their too-long fingers resting idly. He considers the lingering ache in his chest, the ugly bullet-wound scar he knows lies beneath his hospital gown. 

The presence still hidden, quiet, at the back of his mind.

“Al,” Kat says, touching his hand.

“Mm,” he replies, nonchalant, turning so she can’t look in his eyes. He’s only glad his father is still off on some dig or another. He’s sure he’d break with even the slightest whiff of his worry and disappointment.

Kat sighs, squeezes his hand and pats his cheek. “I’ll check with the nurse to see how long they plan to keep you,” she says, and turns to leave the room. Flora lingers just long enough to give Al a tight hug and a peck on the forehead, then reluctantly follows.

The room is far, far too quiet.

“Shut up,” he mutters to no one.

Fendi doesn’t say a word.

 

~

 

They discharge him by the evening, as soon as they’re confident his heart rate has stabilized, though he’s under orders to follow up with his cardiologist as soon as they can get him in. Where the world had felt open and inviting and familiar but hours before, his flat in the dark of sundown feels cold and enclosed and, bizarrely, utterly alien. He’s lived there for years — since before Forbodium, even — and yet in this moment he feels like a stranger.

He opens the closet to remove Fendi’s Converse, and, with a moment of mournful hesitance, replaces them with his running shoes. He won’t be needing them much anymore, apparently.

 _I thought you were going to make dinner?_  Fendi pipes up about fifteen minutes into his (otherwise fruitful) moping, laid back in the ugly recliner Fendi purchased the previous year, with a glass of cheap whiskey that he thinks was a gift after his promotion to inspector.

“Not in the mood,” he grumbles back aloud, because there’s no one to look like him like he’s mad in his own dimly-lit living room. 

 _You’re always in the mood to cook._  

“Well today I’m _not,”_  he growls, spitefully swigging his whiskey. It’s disgusting, but it was _available_  and frankly, he’d rather like to be drunk right now. “Get some of your damnable takeaway if you’re so desperate for food.”

There’s a long, empty silence after that, but several minutes later, he feels Fendi reluctantly slip forward into his mind. For the first time he can remember, he relaxes gladly into the metaphorical backseat, and even goes so far as to actively block out his awareness of what Fendi’s doing without him.

It’s empty. It’s quiet. He sinks heavily into it.

And then, an indeterminate amount of time later, Fendi shoves him back into control and he snaps awake at the table.

 _I ordered from the, quote, ‘good place’,_  Fendi says by way of explanation as Al blinks down at his plate: a well-cooked steak with all his usual side dishes. _Not that I understand your insistence on it. Pizza delivery is just as palatable, and superior in both convenience and price._

“Your opinion is objectively incorrect,” he replies, though there’s little fire to it. Despite his dedication to moping, he knows better than to let a good meal go to waste, so he digs in and aggressively attempts not to enjoy it. Which is, of course, a difficult prospect — it’s cooked beautifully, and he’s missed going to the restaurant; it’s been ages since he patronized it last.

 _We took Hilda, once,_  Fendi notes, inexplicably nostalgic.

 _“I_  took Hilda,” Al corrects, bitter. A few bites more, though, and he softens — Fendi’s having a bad a day as he is, after all, and yet he still went to the trouble of ordering a meal that Al would actually enjoy. “...regardless. Yes, a long time ago.” 

_They threatened to kick you out for disturbing the other patrons. I’m surprised they didn’t hang up on me when I called in._

Al cracks a grin at the memory, unable to help himself. The details of their argument had been lost to time, but it’d been _vicious,_ the two of them screaming at each other across the table, so caught up in it that neither could remember nor care that they were in the middle of a fine establishment. He’s certain one of them ended up driving a piece of silverware straight into the table like a spear. Probably not the best foundation for a relationship, in retrospect, but _oh,_ he did miss the sheer passion of it sometimes.

Fendi was silent for several minutes, then, Al eating in uneasy, yet comfortable silence. _I’m sorry._

“What? You’ll have to be more specific.”

 _For changing everything,_  he clarifies, and Al’s fork freezes in midair. _With Hilda, and the force, and here in the flat, and— just. All of it._

He refrains from responding for several minutes, half-buzzed brain skipping and re-starting on the implications like a crooked record. “...it was hardly your fault,” he finally lands on. “You were as much a victim as I in that regard.”

_I’m sure you understand that it’s difficult to perceive it that way. After all, I insisted upon my own guilt. If I had maintained our innocence as you insisted—_

“It’s in the past,” he snaps. “The man responsible is going to be thoroughly punished for his crimes. What good is it for you to continue luxuriating in self-pity?”

Fendi has no immediate reply to that. Al finishes up his steak in the silence. _...funny, coming from you, of all people,_  he finally smirks. _I’ve never known a person more eager for an excuse to dramatically fall back on a chaise lounge._

“Oh, shut it. At least I _do_  something with that energy.” He sets his silverware firmly down on the plate, and adds, “any chance I can get you to chip in around here and do the dishes for a change?”

_Not a chance. I did my part ordering the food, dear brother, I think it’s only fair that the chore falls to you._

“Jackass.” He doesn’t press, though, languidly stretching as he stands to bring his plates to the sink.

By the time he finishes washing up, the flat’s begun to feel familiar again.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on tumblr @anonymouspuzzler or on twitter @BigPuzz !! Thanks for reading!!


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